Re: Table Request: Accident-Occupant-Effect

[mskala@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca]

On Wed, 22 Sep 2004, Elijah Meeks wrote:
> Only accidents don't affect occupants.  So, if anyone
> can think of a better solution to this problem, let me
> know, otherwise, if somebody in the know gets the
> chance, I think it's worthwhile to see accidents
> affect occupants.

I don't know if this is better, but you could probably do it by giving
each "offline" unit a material which, once fully consumed, will cause the
unit to wreck into its "online" form.  For randomness you could give it
just one point of the material and use a sufficiently small fractional
consumption rate (we do support fractional consumption rates, right?).

While we're wishlisting for terrain accidents, I would like to be able to
set accidents or attrition for *movement through*, as opposed to *presence
in*, terrain.  I wanted to model a school bus which can be driven over
hostile terrain, but which takes damage if you do that.  Well, if I use
"attrition" then you can drive over rocks and broken glass with impunity
as long as you make sure to end the turn on the road; and if I use
"wrecking" then you pay the penalty as soon as you move into a
hostile-terrain hex, but the wrecked form can't also be vulnerable to
wrecking on that terrain, because wrecking repeats recursively until it
hits a form that won't wreck in the hex.

Neither of those solutions addresses the fact that if you park on hostile
terrain you shouldn't take any additional damage just sitting there,
beyond the damage you took getting there - it is movement in particular
that causes the damage.  The ideal solution would be to be able to set a
(possibly fractional and probabilistic) hit point cost paid every time,
and as soon as, the unit moves into (or maybe out of) a hex of the hostile
terrain..
-- 
Matthew Skala
mskala@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca                    Embrace and defend.
http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/